sou vs su, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“sou” is a verb and “su” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#106
“sou” frequency rank: #6,713
“su” frequency rank: 6819
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	sou	su
Definition	primeira pessoa do singular do presente do indicativo do verbo ser	dele

Letter map: sou vs su

Shared letters muted; letters that set sou and su apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch

sou

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for sou / su

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sou is averb and suanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 6819, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sou is recorded at frequency rank #106, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈsow/, /ˈso/. su is at rank #6,713, tagged as anadj.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 6819, this pair ranks #67,503 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of sou vs su

Shared letters: su. Private to "sou": o. Private to "su": -.

"sou" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "su" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "sou" and "su" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sou" is a verb and "su" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "sou" vs "su" - which ranks higher?

"sou" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #106 in our Portuguese list, against #6,713 for "su". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "sou" and "su". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "sou" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "su" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #67,503 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"sou" and "su" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Sau vs su". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #67,503 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.